1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a liquid crystal display.
2. Description of the Background
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one of the most widely-used flat panel displays, and is composed of two display panels on which field generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode are formed. A liquid crystal layer may be interposed between the two display panels. In the LCD, voltages are applied to the field generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the liquid crystal layer. Subsequently, alignment of liquid crystal molecules of the liquid crystal layer may be determined by the electric field. Accordingly, the polarization of incident light may be controlled and an image may be displayed.
The LCD also includes switching elements connected to the respective pixel electrodes and a plurality of signal lines, such as gate lines and data lines, for controlling the switching elements and applying voltages to the pixel electrodes. The gate lines transmit gate signals generated through a gate driving circuit, the data lines transmit data voltages generated through a data driving circuit, and the switching elements transmit the data voltage to the pixel electrodes according to the gate signals.
Gate driving and data driving circuits are directly mounted on the display panel using a plurality of IC chips, or are mounted on a flexible circuit film and attached to the display panel; however, the IC chips occupy a large portion of the manufacturing cost of the LCD. Therefore, for LCDs with high resolution and a large size, it is desirable to reduce the number of data driver ICs since the price of data driver ICs is higher than that of the gate driving circuit. The gate driving circuit may be integrated in the display panel along with the gate lines, the data lines, and the switching element such that the cost of an LCD may be reduced; however, the data driving circuit can have a complicated structure such that it is difficult to integrate the data driver IC in the display panel. As a result, it is further necessary to reduce the number of data driver ICs.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.